Oppo Electronics’ began its operation in Malaysia just two months ago with the launch of four smartphones: N1, R1, Find 5 Mini, and Neo. With the model number R831, Oppo Neo sits at the very end of the spectrum at the time, but since then two more Oppo devices showed up — Yoyo and Joy — pushing Neo up into second-last place.
Neo is aimed at the entry-level market, but there are more and more devices of this class showed up in just the past few months, like the Moto G, Zenfones, Liquid Z3s, and the U9 series, just to name a few.
How will the Neo stack up against the rest? I believe that any device will always have its place in the market, provided that they’re worth the money. So in this review we’re going to explore whether its feature-to-cost ratio is priced to move, or completely out of whack.
Design and hardware
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With manufacturers including Oppo itself obsessed with making their high-end phones bigger, I’m glad that there are still sub-4.7-inch phones out there today. Neo fits this category with its 132 x 65.8 x 9.2 mm body, and 130g weight.
Though the entire outer shell except the display is made out of plastic, the backplate using a non-glossy yet not too matte material that doesn’t attract grime. The top and bottom edges are made out of glossy plastic though; the former is where the 3.5mm headset port is placed, and the micro-USB port and microphone pinhole is found on the latter.
The display is flanked by the physical capacitive navigation keys at the bottom, and the earpiece, front-facing camera, and ambient light sensor above. Over at the back, you’ll immediately notice the lack of a camera LED flash, though it has small pinholes at the bottom for its back-firing speaker.
I like how the backplate is user-removable, revealing the battery, mini-SIM, and micro-SIM slots. However, I can’t help but feel like Oppo is still trying to experiment with different type of designs and see what sticks. In fact, the Neo has the sleek look that’s more similar to the Find 5 than the Find 5 Mini. Even the buttons are on the same reversed locations: the power button on the left, and the volume rocker on the right.
Display and sound
Oppo Neo has a 4.5-inch 480 x 854 FWVGA IPS LCD panel at around 207PPI. There are many factors to making a display great, and this phone seems to get one right. Its viewing angles are surprisingly great, though its pixel density left us wanting more.
Not only the outer layer isn’t Corning’s Gorilla Glass, through a light reflection you can tell that the glass is not entirely even. It feels frictional to the touch, due to the lack of proper oleophobic coating, not to mention the higher-than-usual smudges it gets. The glass panel is also not made of a higher quality material found on higher-end models that has excellent light diffraction properties; instead it is highly reflective and difficult to see under fluorescent lamps or direct sunlight.
For a low-end device, the Neo even has an ambient light sensor for the display’s automatic brightness setting, however it is too sensitive and would immediately dim the display if I were to cover the sensor for just a split second. It is also too dim in general and we’re better off disabling auto mode and just use the convenient brightness slider on the notifications pull-down shade.
The audio side of things isn’t any better either. Call quality is OK, but the sound from the earpiece breaks when the volume is at maximum. The main speaker sounds fine though — I’d say it’s around 60-70dB and is loud enough in an indoor setting.
The audio issue is clear when the supplied earphones, or any other earphones, are inserted. Unlike modern Android skins, there are no separate audio profiles for speaker and earphones. So, if the volume is at max, remember to dial it down a little before inserting the earphones.
Audio quality over earphones are bad. Not only will it not work with the EarPod’s microphone and controls, even when no track is playing through, it will produce a hissing-like sound I thought I left behind since the Walkman days. What’s worse is that no matter what headphones you use, the sound will crackle when playing heavy bass or generally loud tunes.
Camera
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You shouldn’t be expecting much from a low-end smartphone’s camera, but I didn’t expect the Neo’s camera to be this bad. While I completely understand the decision to use a 5MP sensor, and could live with a low-end phone without an LED flash, but the fixed focus camera is unacceptable. Even the Nokia Lumia 520 and Galaxy Note 8.0’s camera have autofocus. Better still, even the Nokia XL has autofocus, and, an LED flash for its 5MP camera.
Needless to say, it doesn’t have HDR mode and can only take 720p videos, but there are other scenes like Sports, Night, and Sunset; plus two other modes which are Panorama and Beautify.
If you’re wondering how does the Neo’s camera fare against other 5MP smartphone cameras (or smaller, in M8’s case), you just need to look at the following five photos:
Oppo Neo, 5MP fixed focus
Samsung Galaxy Nexus, 5MP autofocus
Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0, 5MP autofocus
Nokia Lumia 520, 5MP autofocus
HTC One (M8), 4MP autofocus
ColorOS
We have already extensively covered ColorOS on both our N1 and R1 reviews, where you could read more about its features, strengths, and weaknesses. Here, I’m just going to recap on the important features, and some differences from the flagship N1.
Credit has to be given to Oppo again for their continuous support of its products, even on the lowest-end model. I believe it shipped with ColorOS 1.0 that’s based on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, but as recent as just a week or two ago, it received another firmware update to have the build number R831_11_140417, that’s on Android 4.2.2. There is a possibility that when Find 7 and 7a are launched, the N1 and the rest of the new Oppo devices will be upgraded to ColorOS 1.2 too, that’s based on Android 4.3.
Much of the features are almost identical to the Oppo N1, which include the built-in Swype keyboard, custom gesture and motion controls, and the excellent Permissions Monitor. However, due to hardware limitation, there are some notable features missing, namely O-Touch, NFC, and Swype’s inability to let users sign in to its text prediction personalization feature.
Just like the full-fledged ColorOS, it is one of the more stable OEM Android skins out there, but has its own issues like the inability to expand rich notifications, and prioritizing beauty over security (lock screen themes).
Performance and battery life
We usually keep the performance and battery life parts until the very end of the review, for these two factors will either make or break a smartphone. In Oppo Neo’s case, it’s an utter disappointment.
The MediaTek MT6572 processor it’s using is so low-end, Oppo is even embarrassed to reveal it on Neo’s specifications page. Its dual-core 1.3GHz CPU is probably a Cortex-A7, and the GPU is probably Mali-400 MP. I mean, dual-core’s fine, if it has assisting chips and 2GB RAM like the ones in Moto X, but Oppo Neo only has 512MB of memory. If my aging Galaxy Nexus’ 1.2GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 with a usable memory of just 695MB is already ultra-sluggish after two years of use, imagine having less RAM and running Android 4.2.2 that doesn’t support TRIM? Without TRIM, if the storage fills up — and it will — the phone will get more and more sluggish, if it’s not already.
Naturally, I wanted to install a range of games from light ones like 2048, to medium-heavy games like Ski Safari, to the processor-intensive ones like Dead Trigger 2, and immediately I’m reminded of why I prefer devices like the Nexus that has one dynamic, unified internal flash storage; here’s why. The one and only reason is how deceiving the numbers can be. Neo already has a small ‘4GB’ internal storage, but get this — the ‘system storage’ is only 0.98GB while the ‘phone storage’ is at around 1.51GB. Everything you install by default goes to the system storage and that 1GB fills up faster than your toilet tank after some post-laksa episodes. Yes, we can move installed apps into the phone storage or the SD card, but who has got the time for all this babysitting?
Its redeeming quality, however, lies in its removable 1,900mAh battery. This thing just goes on and on, but that’s maybe because I never get to install any of the apps or the games I mentioned earlier, due to its limited storage. But any smartphone that can score a screen uptime of more than 5 hours with some juice to spare, has a good battery life in my book.
I find that the battery percentage doesn’t drop by a single percent, but in chunks. After almost 20 hours of moderate use (1 hour of browsing, 5 minutes of calls, 15 minutes of camera, etc.) with the screen-on time of more than 5 hours, it still has 11% left.
Wrap-up, pricing, and availability
Like I’ve mentioned earlier, any smartphone in the world today has its own place and fills in a specific market, if it’s priced right. At RM598, this is a severely overpriced piece of device, considering that the Moto G with its quad-core chip and 8GB storage is only RM698. What about the Zenfone 5 that using a dual-core Intel Atom SoC with an 8MP PixelMaster camera for RM599? Liquid Z3s with a similar specs as the Oppo Neo? Only RM299. And don’t forget the many Ninetology smartphones, where by purchasing them, gives you the warm and fuzzy feeling of supporting a Malaysian company.
My point is, the Oppo Neo is a perfectly fine low-end smartphone, but it is priced way too high and there are so many better ones out there at the same price or cheaper. I understand that Oppo may be planning to wait until the Find 7 and 7a’s launch before lowering the prices of the N1, R1, Find 5 Mini, and Neo, but it may already be too late by then.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Sleek design
- Stable OS
- Great battery life
Cons
- Poor display
- Audio quality is bad
- Abysmal camera
- Slow performance
- Miniscule storage
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